Hello, and welcome back!
I gotta tell you, it was really refreshing to see the positive responses to Chapter I! It only served to bolster my efforts to get this chapter out to you as soon as I could whilst juggling real life and adulting things!
This is mainly a scene-setter chapter. Again, if there's any inaccuracies or discrepancies, I do apologise. Feel free to inform me in PMs so I can amend it super sneaky-like for future audiences. Starting with this chapter, I will be addressing reviews of particular worth at the end of each chapter to address any questions, concerns or criticisms.
Praises and good feedback won't be addressed; I'll just be silently thanking you from behind the screen.
Enjoy the read!
Chapter II - 'From the Void'
Year: 3.128.992.M41 Imperial Calendar
World: —
System: The Halo Stars
Segmentum: Obscurus
Emptiness. It was all that waited for those who endlessly ventured the void of space. A cold, endless veil of black, broken with impossibly-far glitters of distant stars, just waiting to be touched, yet never will be. To some, it created this crippling sense of isolation,- this crushing sensation that one would forever be stranded in the black, and be forgotten to nothingness. To some, they saw opportunity. For the distance travelled, a reward of great bounty awaited any daring enough to make the journey. Whether it be riches to take for themselves or a new home to settle and start anew.
For others, it simply provided the most humble thing any human being can only dare to dream of having in the 41st millennium. Peace.
The 'Spear of Avarice' sailed along ever so gently in the void- engines roaring at a steady pace as they blasted through the endless silence of the lonesome galaxy. Life teemed aboard the solo Firestorm-class frigate. The activity on the bridge was at ease; the crew went about running their diagnostics and made sure the ship maintained an even functionality at a leisurely pace, without the fear or stress of warp storms or hostile ships assaulting them.
At the helm was Kieron Havelock. Sat in his luxurious master-helmsman's chair, the young man gazed with half-lidded, tired eyes out of the bridge's windows into the endless black, hands resting limply on the console from which he held the immense power bestowed upon him by his master. Raised from birth to be a competent voidsman by the Reikoff household, he earned his position as the Spear's helmsman by age nineteen. At first, the thought of having such ultimate control over a ship baffled and fascinated him beyond his wildest dreams. But the professional decorum and the duty to uphold his owning household's warrant of trade tempered his boyish wonders.
In the end, he understood his duties and responsibilities, and whilst he had to work in tandem with 13,000 other souls onboard, being the one who steers the ship and carries all the souls aboard brought him purpose. It brought him peace.
Smacking his lips together, Havelock looks at the display for a moment to check their charted return path from the Halo Stars. The rogue trader vessel had recently intercepted and cleanly eradicated a renegade merchant ship that had attempted to flee out to the inhospitable star system with some illicitly-obtained (and not to mention -expensive) goods, whilst simultaneously salvaging the majority of it from the wreckage and boarding actions. With only a 28.4% loss to the merchandise, to the victor goes the spoils.
Now, it was Havelock's duty to guide them home to the Segmentum Solar.
"Status report, Carter?" Havelock calmly calls down the bridge to a crew member on one of the glowing terminals. The older man, Carter, looks at him- one bionic eye whirring.
"Report from the engine bays state the enginseers have calmed the machine spirit of the engines. They're running smoothly. Hull damage has been patched-over and void shields are at ninety-one percent capacity and recharging. Smooth sailing from here on out, sir."
Havelock gives the older man a nod and smile, who reciprocates the first gesture, before immersing himself back into the emerald haze of the terminals.
Havelock slouches back into his chair with a sigh, reaching a hand across to snatch himself a swig of the cold coffee that sat in the small ridge of his console. It handily doubled as a makeshift coaster. Havelock's face briefly grimaced at the strong tang the coffee had to it; it was shit quality, and was more a slurry than a liquid at this point. But it kept his blood flowing, and kept him awake for the long journey ahead.
At least once the astropaths take over and they initiate warp travel, he may get a chance to relieve himself.
Perhaps they'll swing by Cadia on the way back? Offload some cargo there. Maybe Havelock'll hire himself one of the local women for the night; he always loved that purple tinge Cadians had to their eyes- certainly added that hint of chaotic sex appeal; he's sure the master will allow it. The crew fought hard and bloody to punish the renegades in such strange, unknown territory, and they deserved a reward of such a magnitude.
But that's what it meant to be on the crew of a rogue trader. Unbridled freedom bestowed by the High Lords of Terra, themselves. It was a reward unto itself.
A set of dull clinks of a menagerie of nails- or rather claws- and an iron boot on the metal decking approached from Havelock's left. The helmsman idly rolled his head in his chair as he greeted the arrival of his company for the night. It stared down upon him, nearly seven foot tall with a wiry, muscular body of a leathery, spotted hide adorned by a rawhide bandolier sat atop a rustic, hand-woven shawl that draped over the creature's upper torso. Beady black eyes regarded the helmsman softly, before its serrated beak clacked in greeting.
"Surprised I am, you haven't taken a rest yet, boy. Been in that chair for near fourteen hours, you have." It drawled with clicks and warbles in its tone. Havelock snorted, and lifted his cup of cold tar, wiggling it about.
"Miracle medicine, Dann'ii. Don't need sleep when you're on your sixth cup." The kroot- Daan'ii- canted his head left-to-right. The small slits either side of his beak flared a few times as he inhaled the not-so-luxurious scent of the thick sludge. The quills on the back of the kroot's head shake with an alluring rattle.
"Smells like dirt, it does." The kroot's judgement was decisive- his long, well-toned arms folding across his chest. This provokes a soft snicker from the master-helmsman. He always appreciated the kroot's company. He'd been in the Reikoff household as bosun, bodyguard and tracker for decades before Havelock was even born. Whilst initially terrified of the Pech native, the two began to grow close as time came on. He just tried not to think of the kroot's ravenous appetite- the way he spoke with his command of low gothic was always an endearing trait that made him a favourite amongst the Spear's voidsmen.
Daan'ii's clawed hand pats Havelock ever so gently on the head with a tenderness completely unthinkable to a creature of such savage potential, as the weathered old kroot joined Havelock in staring across the void before them. The darkness was tinged with a faint, ever present hue from the corona of the hundreds of stars in the system all shining bright at once; the last light to reach the solar system before one crossed into the infinite darkness of the void. Man and kroot admired the view with equal parts awe, and the slightest hint of dread. Havelock was instructed to create a specific route to exit the system, and for good reason.
The Halo Stars were mostly-uncharted. A cluster of star systems bordering along the edge of the Segmentum Obscurus. It was new ground for any daring explorer, but only for the infamous reputation that most expeditions that cross the threshold into the stars have never returned. And whilst Havelock's master was a daring man with no visible sense of fear, he understood there were some things in this galaxy that shouldn't be trifled with. The more Havelock thought about it, the more the thought made him uneasy, so he tried to ease the sensation.
"Do you…still think about Pech? Your homeworld?" Daan'iis's quills click and flutter at the question and his beak tightens.
"The heart, my home is, yes. Miss Pech, I do. But forever grateful to the Reikoffs I am. Purpose, they gave me. A broken thing, I was. The Empire wanted me no longer. Tribe cast me out." Havelock nods solemnly at that, glancing momentarily at the crude iron contraption that replaced Daan'ii's left leg from the knee downwards. The subtle warbles in his tone were tells of the kroot's brooding animosity towards his former companions; he never understood much about life in either the tribes of their homeworld on Pech, nor in the vastly-alien expanse of the T'au Empire. He never had to; he knew better than to push the kroot about a past he was more than comfortable forgetting about.
The Reikoffs were known for hiring downtrodden auxiliaries into their service, even if some are of xenos origin. In fact, it was hardly uncommon for a lot of rogue traders- the warrant of trade gave them the means to carry out their tasks with a blank cheque of exemptions to a lot of things that'd be considered taboo or heresy in the Imperium. Daan'ii's existence under Lord Reikoff's employment is incredulously-tame to some of the aliens he's heard of in other trader coteries.
The kroot rolled his neck with a crack, before pulling a battered tin box from the folds of his shawl- it fit inside his leathery palm, meaning it equaled a small book in a human's hands. The hatch parts with a squeak of rusted hinges, and the kroot pulls out a gnarled, old cigar. Clamping it in his serrated beak, he strikes a match to light the incensed narcotic. Smoke puffed through the slitted nostrils of the kroot, as it continued to stare into the black void of space. The corona of the Halo Stars were beginning to dim; the most treacherous part of their journey out of the forbidden domain almost complete.
"Curious, I find it. This place, you fear. Why do you so?" Daan'ii rotates his head to look down at Havelock some more, who slightly adjusts the trajectory of the ship's engines with a few key presses. The young human looks up at the kroot with a tired, forlorn stare, then he idly shrugs.
"Untold horrors lurk within the light of those stars. Two hundred thousand collective lightyears of warp-spawned entities, maelstroms and other kinds of nasty things that defy reason. Hard to say how many habitable worlds exist there; most the exploration fleets sent have never come back, and those that do are usually given the Emperor's mercy as they come back…changed. For the worse, I mean. Some say the stars are haunted." He huffs dryly at that. "Superstitious nonsense if you ask me. It's mostly due to the Halo Scar."
Daan'ii pensively chews his cigar with a throaty purr. The words clearly tweaked his curiosity. "Halo Scar?" He gets a nodding hum from the master-helmsman.
"Big bloody warp rift that constantly fluctuates and moves around the system. It distorts reality and makes warp travel through here impossible. Fortunately, the chief-astropath's managed to predict its movements and behaviour, so we shouldn't encounter it."
"'Shouldn't'?" The kroot croaked.
"It's the Warp, mate. It doesn't exactly respond to the laws of reality."
"And what becomes of us, if the Scar finds us?"
Havelock's head rocks from side to side. "Well, we're..-"
"In peril?"
"Fucked." The helmsman bluntly says. It certainly draws a couple eyes from the rest of the bridge crew, who Havelock either doesn't notice or ignores. He may be master of steering the ship, but he had no illusions of grandeur that the moment the Halo Scar displaced within a few ten thousand miles away, without the gellar fields active, the Spear was doomed.
Daan'ii goes silent, and lets the smoke billow through the gaps in his jaws. The kroot was -old- by his race's standards, but he hailed from a simple people who didn't have anywhere near as much knowledge of the paracausal hellscape that was the Warp.
"That begs the question. The prey we sought, why come here? If no-one knows what lies beyond the rift- if the Scar moves…rewards are outweighed by the risks, yes?"
Havelock blinked- brows furrowing. The kroot posed a great question even though he already knew the answer. Or it was the most credible one, at least. The clients who tasked the Spear with intercepting the renegades were very 'need-to-know' with the details.
"That exact reason, I guess. No-one comes out here unless they fancy trying their luck to find a planet to crash on, or they're on the run and know most won't dare follow them. My guess is they'd have tried to lose us in the void, then double back before the Scar moved on us." There was a brief pause in Havelock's words- the kroot's eyes on him in patient understanding. But Havelock didn't get to finish his theorising.
Before his mouth could open to continue, the entire bridge- the entire ship- was rocked with a sudden, violent shockwave that hammered throughout the hull from every direction at once like a naval battering ram. An ear-splitting shriek filled the air as hundreds of thousands of tonnes of blessed machinery and engineering was shunted by a violent, invisible presence, as if the Spear of Avarice had just collided with a barrier in the middle of space. But no-one had time to cover their ears to shut out the deafening agonised cries of the frigates's machine spirit, as the presence brought with it a momentum that would wreak sudden havoc.
Had Havelock not been strapped into his chair, he dared think he may have become a bloody smear on the bridge's windows. He was brutally bucked in his restraints, and he bit back a cry of pain as he felt ribs crack and splinter and blood vessels burst internally against the force of the shockwave. Some of the crew were far less fortunate. Some of the navigators and technicians were hurled from their chairs or crushed as they were slammed gut-first into their consoles; those that were standing or wandering the deck were thrown like ragdolls- crashing into the various consoles, terminals, machinery and fixings that formed the deck hull, all with varying degrees of gruesome force with wet snaps of bone and the tearing of flesh.
Daan'ii crashed bodily into Havelock's chair, and his claws grappled on tight by reflex- there was a ripping of fabric and internal padding as the kroot's bid to remain on the decking ravaged the master-helmsman's chair was ultimately in vain; the kroot's claws tore free from the momentum, sending the Pechian native careening into a guard rail that separated the upper bridge from the lower with a loud crack of skull-on-metal.
The force of the event was so substantial, the internal damage reared its head in force. Metal plates fell from the ceiling overhead, threatening to crush those not fast enough to move; some were unfortunately on the slower side. Equipment was tossed as if in a hurricane, smashing into the bulkhead and shattered apart into lethal scrap that showered the crew or colliding into an unfortunate voidsman with the force of a speeding vehicle; terminals uprooted with crackling sparks as electronics were forcibly torn apart, frying anyone who was too close. Calamity gripped the Spear of Avarice in an iron fist, bringing the ship to a grinding stop amidst the Halo Stars, isolating the ship in the midnight.
The ship gave a colossal moan of laboured torment as the initial shockwave gave way to vicious tremors that left every inch of metal verberating as the frigate's hull painstakingly acclimated to its new speed- left to drift like wreckage amongst the stars.
Silence settled with the tremors. The lights in the bridge flickered in spastic frenzy as circuits intelligently re-routed and re-routed again to circumvent the substantial damage they had sustained to keep the power going.
The bridge was filled with the sickening symphony of creaking metal, haywire electronics crackling their last, and the screams and moans of the injured.
Havelock struggled to catch his breath- the young master-helmsman had gone rigid in his chair- his body's natural reaction to not agitate the fresh cracks in his ribcage. Coughing specks of blood, Havelock reached to grasp his head- feeling the fresh, sticky crimson beading under his scalp from the shard of holo-desk that flew his direction, narrowly missing scalping him.
He wanted to scream. Beg to be released from the restraints and be carried to the medbay. He fought back tears of terror and pain; his chair straps holding him in place whilst simultaneously lashing to his mind a sudden sense of panicked vertigo and claustrophobia. But he had a job to do- the Lord would know what to do…his Lord.
'My Lord. Oh, throne…is he alright? Did he survive? I have to–' Havelock struggled against the restraints, and let out a hoarsely-pained cry as he felt the cracks in his rib cage grind and yawn just that little bit more, forcing him to remain still amidst the carnage surrounding him. He takes a few steadying breaths- blood and sweat running down his face as the young man collects himself. Moving was futile. He had to use his head whilst there was still blood flowing through it and not into the internal haemorrhages he was afflicted with.
'–no, no…focus Kieron…tend to the bridge first…' he sucks in a starved breath as he looks about. He raised his voice to the level where it was uncomfortable against his ribs, but loud enough to carry across the bridge- it was close to being lost amidst the noise of chaos aboard the bridge.
"C-Carter? Carter! Sta-status report! Need full diagnostics on th–...the engines. The gun decks; everywhere. Carter?" The bionic eyed voidsman from earlier didn't respond. A feminine voice calls back to him, and in his peripheral, Havelock sees a petite voidswoman with her ginger hair tied into a ponytail scrabble onto the terminal Carter used to man, and began to obey the order. Gripping the hem of her sleeve with her fingertips, she scrubs the screen- her grey uniform now tinged with dust and blood; the latter left a hideous smear on the terminal.
"Yaria? W-Where's Carter?" Havelock asked with trepidation. Yaria didn't avert her gaze from the terminal.
"Behind me, Havelock. He's dead." She says with a cold focus, already accepting the loss of life she was about to discover across the entire ship. Havelock follows her direction, and finds the former voidsman slumped awkwardly against the edge of a console- his back twisted far beyond survivable conditions; a sheet of corrugated iron was embedded a good half dozen inches into his skull- the ridges of the metal acting as a funnel to allow the blood to trickle without pause from his parted face. Havelock clutched his stomach mentally to staunch the sick feeling rising up his throat, forcing himself to avert his gaze and focus only on Yaria. He'd mourn him later. For now, they had to understand what they were dealing with.
A croak catches his attention. Upon finding the source of the distressed noise, Havelock's breath hitches as he sees Daan'ii rise to his feet with trembling legs. Blood drooled freely from the edges of his beak. His breech-loading slug rifle hung loose over his back. Given how he landed, it was a miracle from the Emperor that the kroot hadn't been guillotined by his own blades on impact.
Using a claw to steady himself on the guard rail, Daan'ii staggers to the torn-apart chair Havelock was bound to, and slurred.
"By the Emperor…Daan'ii, how are your wounds?" The kroot registered the helmsman's words and shook his head. His quills clacked together dazedly.
"Live, I will. Freed, you must be." The kroot draws a wickedly-sharp blade from the pelt-woven sarong- the edge was slightly curved and lined with saw teeth. Slipping the blade's edge into the belt, the initial movement caused Havelock to stiffen and whimper, causing the old Pechian to steady his blade. Daan'ii clicked his beak, and rested his free hand atop Havelock's head to calm the injured helmsman.
"Death surrounds us…but in naval combat, I have participated in. Naval assault, that was not…what was–"
"Master Havelock! We've got casualties flooding in from the decks!" Yaria called out in stunned shock, interrupting the kroot. Her fingers worked overtime to compartmentalise and segment the incoming reports and maydays being dispatched to the bridge as fast as she could.
"Which ones..?"
"All of them."
Havelock began to whiten into a bedsheet. "...how many..?"
"...current reports indicate seven thousand one-hundred and ninety-two casualties reported, so far…numbers are rising." Yaria's voice trembled as she continued to tear through the onslaught of SOSs flooding her focus from throughout the ship.
Daan'ii's jaw clenched- the old kroot looking across the tattered bridge- face unreadable. Havelock tried to control his breathing to stop himself hyperventilating. Never in his youth would he have dreamed this was happening.
"A-And the engines..?"
"Offline. Two of the lower starboard engines have received critical damage; the enginseers and servitors who aren't injured or dead are working overtime to contain the leaks and prevent a meltdown." Yaria's voice began to grow cold. Detached. Hope had begun to wane from the surviving bridge crew as the realisation began to dawn on them. Like a candlelight in the cold dark, it began to flicker and die out. Havelock didn't want to admit it. To admit it would admit his failure. To the Spear; to everyone on board; to Lord Reikoff. But the truth was already staring him in the face.
They were crippled. Stranded in the Halo Stars with no hope of rescue. And the Halo Scar would soon be upon them.
Alexzai Reikoff III continued to scribe his reports onto the old parchment. Ink bled from the nib of his pen as he fluidly recounted the latest tale of the Spear of Avarice, only stopping every so often to pull from his glass of luxurious brandy to help quench the writer's block. The process had repeated itself for a good half-dozen hours, until the report reached its final conclusion, complete with a flourish of his signature.
Dipping the pen back into the bottle, he casually swipes the pages off the desk in his gloved hand, and holds them aloft- not even regarding his servitor as it staggers to his desk to grasp the papers in its chromatic claws.
"File these ones."
The servitor groans in affirmation, and turns to the vast filing cabinets in the rogue trader's quarters. Sitting back in his leather chair, Reikoff runs a hand through the jet-black mohawk down to the shaved nape of his neck, and exhales. The exertion of air seemed to unwind every knot in his muscles, and decompress every stiff joint. Calm and solace came to the trader like the warm embrace of a lover- in tandem with the sweet, sticky burn of the brandy crawling down his throat to fill his belly. Smacking his lips, he breathes in the liquor's aroma from the stratas left behind on the hairs of his moustache, and allows himself a chiselled grin. All in a good day's work.
He sits in the quiet for a long moment, before he idly presses a finger onto the recorder built into the veneered wood of his desk. Clearing his throat- he fills the pit of his gold-plated pipe with a hearty amount of fragrant tobacco whilst holding it in his teeth, and lightly extends the forefinger of his curled right fist. The crooked digit's ring- stylised in the form of the two-headed dragon of House Reikoff- spat forth a miniscule jet of flame from the digital weapon's muzzle within the dragons' maws, lighting the pipe.
He fills his lungs to their limit- letting the sweet smoke charr his insides lovingly, before releasing the thick, spiced smoke from his lips and nostrils. The smoke ascends and collides with the mural-painted ceiling; it settles upon the expensive artwork, and dances amongst itself whilst the trader folds his booted legs together, bionic eye clicking and whirring.
"Log number four-seven-three. After yesterday's successful interception and annihilation of the renegade vessel 'Duty Bound', within the borders of the Halo Stars, we are currently en-route back to the Segmentum Solar after they'd had the bollocks and great fortune to conduct a successful board and raid of the Ordo Xenos vessel 'Malice Eternum'. The irony of the traitors' vessel name is not lost on me." He breaks his monologue with a chuckle. "Out of all the cargo that was reported illegally-obtained and-slash-or-stolen, we've recovered just under three quarters. Given the utter devastation wrought upon the ship, it was a miracle we even reclaimed a third. A rather bountiful haul. Standard munitions, as the 'Eternal' was currently en-route to link with a fleet for resupplying the nearby warfront. Mainly militarum-grade small arms; a few hundred crates of lasguns of varying patterns, a few sealed containers of Ragefire and Magnacore plasma guns; even some few thousand MREs were recovered. Enough to feed a whole regiment. Most of the cargo, however, was imported goods, non-perishables and luxuries. Exotic spices, sheet material and fabrics, metals and ores.
The main focus however, was some artefacts and trinkets of evident xenos origin that we've been unable to identify or crack open due to the encrypted void-shielded containers they were in. Regardless, they've been logged, stored in the vault, and they can easily be bartered with one of the Ordo's representatives at a later date. Though that does twinge my thoughts, somewhat…whatever the renegades were intending to do with this cargo and this far out into one of the most treacherous of the Segmentum's reaches, I can wholeheartedly guess it wasn't for their own sakes. The weapons would certainly justify the thesis that they were supplying a larger traitor force or something. But why an Ordo Xenos vessel and simply not a militarum resupply escort? Those xenos artefacts in particular…" Reikoff chews the thoughts dramatically over the log, before he audibly grunts in dismissal.
"Well, with them now corpses in the void, who can say? My job's done, thus, I no longer care." He takes another pause to tug on the gilded pipe. The heat of the smoke swells in his lungs, dragging him ever closer to the precipice of content, before he lets it drift out through his nostrils- grazing his eloquently-twirled moustache.
"A patrol frigate from the local Retributors chapter of the adeptus astartes came to investigate the commotion; they've patrolled the Halo Stars for a while now, to ensure all the horrors that lurk within stay right there. Our client demanded utmost secrecy in reclaiming the cargo, so wavering the fine print of my household's Warrant of Trade was enough to convince the captain of the space marines to spin their vessel around. The look on his face…like the smacked arse of an ogryn." Reikoff laughs bombastically at that with a faint wheeze to his voice. Shaking his head, he decides not to dwindle his thoughts on the near-miss he had with being investigated by the Emperor's finest.
"Our route's been calculated back. The astropaths have managed to predict the movement of the Halo Scar warp rift, and if their feelings in the empyrean are to be relied upon, we'll be long gone by the time the Scar passes by. Good thing, too…I'd rather not be devoured by my own ship." Reikoff briefly refers to the digitally-charted course he had sent to him from the bridge, tracing the path along all the registered stops, changes in course, predicted obstacles, all the way back to the Spear's terminus in the Segmentum Solar. His teeth click on the pipe in thought.
"Our first stop will be at Cadia herself. We can deposit the guns to the guard stationed there; I'm sure Creed'll be pleased to have the extra firepower. Besides, the crew could do with the rest, Throne knows space can drive a man mad if he stays in its dark, endless embrace long enough. Terminate log." Reikoff pressed down on the key that neighboured the record button. It depresses with a final click, ending the compiling of the rogue trader's thoughts and leaving him in the silence. Lifting a leg one after the other, he folds them atop his desk and reclines in his chair. All that he could hear was the idle whirrs of the servitor attending its set tasks overlaying the ever-present hum of the Spear's engines that provided the most gentlest of vibrations through the entire ship. So gentle one had to pay the utmost attention to feel the ships' body breathe with every mile it drifted through space. It provided comfort and solitude to the old noble to the point where he felt content enough to let his eye grow heavy.
With his work done, Reikoff closed his eye, waited for the call for planetfall, and let the humming of his vessel blanket him into a dull sleep. Then calamity struck.
The shockwave threw Reikoff from his chair, the rogue trader barely having time to register he was airborne- barely time to scream- until he smashed bodily into the side wall with a bone-crushing thwack. His belt-mounted powerfield flashed across his body like a flare from the sun as it barely absorbed the mass impact of terminal velocity- its split-second corona culminating in a deafening electrical crackle as the cells overloaded and expended in half a heartbeat; the power field's generator popping loudly as its life was spent in one fell swoop. Reikoff's mind swam with white-hot pain. His spine had ultimately seized and locked up; no doubt he'd suffered some form of internal damage. He dared move his hand to caress his aching back. His teeth had cracked from biting down so hard on each other. Warm, copper-smelling blood trickled from his nostrils and lips, and his left bionic eye was a migraine-inducing haze of static and haptic feedback as the cybernetics desperately attempted to reroute and restart to provide their host a return to full sight.
Lying messily on his side, Reikoff lay for what felt like hours, controlling his breathing and slowly willing the pain away. His back continued to ache and scream with each rise and fall of his chest, but as time grew on, he began to grow confident that his spine was not shattered; strained and quite possibly hairline fractured, but he'd yet to lose feeling below the torso. And despite his incomparable agony, he was grateful for his power field. In its purpose-built sacrifice, it was the only thing that had prevented him from becoming a gory stain on his mural-decorated wall. It saved his life.
He strained to call-out to his servitor, until his one good eye settled on a gruesome sight. In the throes of the quake, the servitor had toppled over from its duties at Reikoff's numerous filing cabinets, which had decided to join the lobotomised tech-slave in its descent. Hefty towers of hard metal filled with considerable weight of files and other hefty items had fallen in unity upon the servitor's upper torso and head, caving in its chest cavity; crushing half-alive organs and internal hardware and flattening its malnourished skull into a messy pulp. Congealed, oil-muddled blood, near-desiccated brain matter and decrepit machine fluids had flowed without pause from the corpse's ruined remains, and soaked into Reikoff's luxurious crimson felt carpet; the servitor's limbs occasionally twitched in perverted parodies of death throes.
It was at this point that the silence had begun to dwindle from his ears; an endless cacophony of white noise that stabbed into his brain like a thousand tiny pinpricks that robbed him of hearing. A dull, mechanised moan began to fill the vacuum his subsiding head injury was leaving behind, growing louder and more intrusive with each growing second. The wail of the ship's alarm; a steady, rising mechanised cry of the Spear's paint and torment, signalling the crew that it was wounded.
Gritting his blood-flecked teeth, Reikoff crawled to his upturned table with an agonising slowness. His ornate carapace plate was still strapped to his chest, and the weight was almost unbearable. But he soldiered on in his mission to right himself. Grasping onto the damaged furniture's leg, he snarls as he wobbles to a stand. Every vertebrae in his back cracked and creaked- each one eliciting a growl or snarl from the rogue trader's unbreakable sneer, until he rose to a final stand.
Bracing himself upon the wall, he inched himself towards his dresser, which had sustained a filing cabinet to its flank; the rich teak cabinet hand-crafted from his homeworld had splintered like mere chipboard. Fortunately, the contents within had survived the shockwave's havoc. Mostly.
Reikoff silently lamented the buckled bucket that his prestigious helmet had become, but was thankful to see his weapons had not been lost. Spitting an amalgam of phlegm and blood onto the carpet, Reikoff seized his heirloom archaeotech pistol, and his thin-edged power rapier Swansong. With a delicate grasping of the haft, Reikoff half-drew the blade- the polished edge shimmered in the flickering lights of his quarters. A subtle flick of the brass switch, and the needle-like sword's power field hummed into life; coating the blade in a cerulean hue that would spell death to whoever's flesh was kissed by its point. With an embittered sneer, the rogue trader deactivated the power field, and strapped both sword and gun to his belt. With shaking, gloved fists, he tried to make himself as presentable as possible amidst his evident wounds from the shockwave that had made his vessel bleed.
Snatching the pipe from its ill-fitting resting place in the blood-drenched carpet, he wipes it clean in his gloved palm. Pocketing some fresh tobacco, he strides to his door, cranks the handle and tears it open to behold himself to the anarchy that had befallen his crew.
Stepping into the blanched corridors outside his quarters, Lord Reikoff was greeted by the sights of chaos and anarchy. The usually-pristine white corridor painted in a platinum glow of the lights had darkened- flickering in and out of midnight as the emergency lights broadcasted their warning in intermittent scarlet hues.
The walls had creased and cracked- intricate tilework amidst reinforced wall panels shattered into dust onto the walkways, merging with the blood and other detritus. Traffic was constant in the confines of the corridors; clattering servitors and the Spear's voidsmen were moving back and forth at various paces and states; some of the latter cradled or carried their wounded, dying or dead comrades; their voices lost in an indecipherable mess of screams, moans and barking orders. Only a select few voidsmen saluted their lord at his presence; the ones who seemingly ignored or were oblivious to the rogue trader's presence were ultimately forgiven in Reikoff's mind: Duty came before pleasantries. Hell had gripped the vessel, and he needed to find out what and where it came from.
Stomaching the pain in his body with invisibly gritted teeth, Reikoff began the short walk to the bridge. He knew the elevators and transit system would be offline from the surge.
Every corridor he strode through, every walkway he crossed, he saw calamity and death. Corpses of broken men and women littered the decks in a myriad of twisted positions and states of trauma; engineers and technicians scrabbled to furiously repair the damage sustained, some even going as far as to ignore their own injuries.
The air was filled with a head splitting cacophony of the screams of the wounded and dying, blaring alarms and filtered voices over the ship-wide intercom with the frenzied exchanged words of the crew that were doing their damndest to keep the ship alive.
Reikoff felt the sting in his pride upon seeing the Spear being laid so low. There was no warning of an anomaly, no threat of an incoming warp storm nor a call to battle stations. The whole situation was wrong, and sinister. It unsettled and angered the rogue trader all the way to the bridge's bulkhead doors. Running his tongue along his gum line, he felt the nauseating sting of loose, cracked teeth and torn gums- the sweet, acrid tang of blood coating his tongue. It was a strange sensation, he thought. Punching in his code at the console to the bridge, the mechanical doors gave a brief groan as the damaged circuitry strained to obey the rogue trader's commands. The power was failing, and the terminal was ceasing to function; in its last spurt of life, the gilded skull that ornamented the centre of the bulkhead doors spit down the middle ever so slightly, revealing a set of vertical rails inside the skull's nasal cavity. The doors gave a loud, echoing clank as the locks disengaged.
Realising the door would now need to be opened manually, Reikoff grabbed a hand in either hand, baring his teeth for the incoming discomfort. He strained to open the bulkheads manually- felt every bruise and wound both internal and external blossom and exacerbate to an agonising degree. Biting back a scream of pain, Reikoff hauls the doors open. The gears ground noisily along the grooves they sat in with the faintest intermittent glow of sparks as the bulkheads are forcibly torn open- giving way to the small inclined corridor up to the bridge's doors. Given the flashing lights coming from the end of the corridor accompanied by an indecipherable mess of noise, it was an indicator the final doors to the bridge were open; most likely malfunctioning to an open state.
Gritting his teeth, Reikoff slipped the pipe into his teeth, stifling a chesty cough as he filled the pit with tobacco. Fortunately, his digital ring was still functioning. Lighting the sweet tinder with a flicker of flame, he rebuilds his confidence and posture with a soft drag of the pipe, before starting his way up the corridor.
The situation on the deck was far from better than the distance of chaos throughout his ship that he passed by on his journey to the bridge. The disarray, smoke, sparking electrics and corpses had Reikoff's shoulders slump in dejection as the situation became all too real. What slim hope he had left that the bridge had survived mostly unscathed was lost to the void.
There was no call to attention- no snappy, uniform greeting to their master and commander. Sure, the crew that saw him called him by title or 'sir', but none gave the full pleasantry. He saw and understood why. Smoke billowed from his nostrils as he pieced himself back together.
"Forty-nine years of sailing this fucking space. Not once. Not even once." he bitterly grumbled to himself. He'd been exploring the stars ever since he was a young boy; first by his father's side until he passed the mantle of Lord Reikoff down to him. He prided himself on being an excellent navigator and starfarer. For decades, he's repelled pirates, tussled with rogue navies, and navigated hazardous space. But not once has House Reikoff been hit by such a calamity. It angered him. Shamed him.
A boyish splutter with raspy words caught his attention from above at the helm. Looking up towards the grated gangplank, his eyes (the bionic one regained its function a good few minutes ago) settled on the telltale obscured form of an old Pechian stood by a sorry excuse for a helmsman's chair. Pursing his lips, Reikoff turns for the ramp up to the helm.
Grabbing the battered handrail for support, Reikoff ignores the sticky warmth of blood clinging to his glove from the railing; he also ignores the body that caused it on the other side below the gangplank. His boot steps on the metal drew the attention of the injured kroot. His head bowed- quills briefly clicking together as his clawed hand comes to rest over where presumably his heart was.
"Master Reikoff. An elating sight to see you alive, it is." Daan'ii sounded groggy. The soft swaying on his legs and the hazy quality to his eyes were a good indicator he took a hit to the head in the incident. Reikoff's attention turned to the sound of repressed whimpering in the chair. With a determination in his step, he strides over to the helmsman console, peering over the rim of the chair to look down upon the whitened face of Havelock. The master-helmsman weakly smiles up at the rogue trader, who returns the gesture in an almost-fatherly way.
"My lord. Oh…thank the Emperor…you're ali–" Reikoff hushed him ever so gently, shutting out the pandemonium around him.
"Save your breath, my boy. You've done well." He added as much sincerity as he could to quell the evident doubt that was manifesting in Havelock's eyes- it was hardly uncommon. His job demanded much responsibility; he was young; he viewed Reikoff as a mentor and a father. It soothed the rogue trader's pain to see that doubt melt away; the boy nodding in affirmation as he reclined into the chair. He looked frail and ill.
Letting his smile drop into a sneer, he looks out the windows, into the void of space. Whilst there were evident cracks and compromises in the structural support of the windows, it was a throne-blessed miracle that the windows were able to survive the event. The blast shields didn't have time to lower, and were still disengaged; the windows surviving was the only thing that prevented the bridge from being torn apart entirely by the vast vacuum.
"What's wrong with him, Daan'ii?" Reikoff quietly muttered to the kroot as he leaned in the Pechian's favour. Daan'ii's head turned slightly to accommodate his master's words. A soft guttural click precedes his hushed reply.
"The boy was strapped in when…'it' happened. Broken ribs, I think he has. Trying to remove him causes pain, but survive he will, though the infirmary, he must go. And soon." The kroot held a measure of insistence to his tone to which Reikoff wholeheartedly agreed with. Whilst the chair undoubtedly saved Havelock's life, it may have instead caused all manner of problems within that could claim his life in the next hour. He needed to be freed.
Inhaling and exhaling, he steels himself, and has a brief scan of the bridge. His piercing bionic eye settles on a strong-abled voidsman currently carrying the half-bisected body of a crew member to the side, where a disturbing volume of corpses have been arranged to clear the decking. Reikoff's gloved finger snaps into a point.
"YOU! Unhand that body, and get up here! I need you to carry the master-helmsman to the infirmary." The man looked up, feeling the immediate weight of the lord's gaze upon him. With a bark of affirmation, the man courteously places the woman's body onto the decking, and he rushes up the ramp. With a soft nod, Reikoff motions for Daan'ii to move aside, and stands before Havelock, who cranes his head at him. There's a look of fearful apprehension in his eyes. He knew what was coming.
"Alright lad, I'm going to need you to hold very still, and be brave for me." He reassuringly smiles at the master helmsman, who bites back a whimper and nods. Tears were flowing down his cheeks. He was frightened; in pain. He was still barely a man.
Exhaling, Reikoff nods tersely to the voidsman he summoned. With slow, delicate hands, Reikoff reaches across the straps to the buckles that imprisoned Havelock.
"Keep the chair steady, and be ready to lift him out. I don't want his ribs piercing his lungs." The rogue trader commanded firmly, ignoring the boy's heightened sense of fear at his words.
"Yessir." The voidsman nodded begrudgingly. He was most unharmed, save for a small laceration upside the temple. They'd have to be fast; Reikoff was fairly certain the chair was keeping everything together. Silently counting in his head, he reaches the third count, and rapidly unclasps the buckles and straps of the chair. Like the crack of a whip, they lash back into their casings- the sudden relief of pressure causing Havelock's injured rib cage to flex outwards. The screams that elicited only joined the ongoing atmosphere of pain and suffering in the bridge.
The strong arms of the voidsman are quick to secure the master-helmsman- his expertise in carrying the wounded having him haul the much smaller Havelock into a heavily-supported stand. He didn't even need to be reminded of his duty; nodding once to Reikoff, the voidsman begins his task of escorting Havelock out of the bridge down an uncertain path to the rapidly-filling infirmary.
Reikoff watches the two limp away into obscurity amongst the few bridge crew trying to hold things together, releasing a breath he was unaware he was even holding. Daan'ii's heated breath grazes the back of his coat. He already knew what kroot was going to ask.
"I…don't know what there is to be done, old friend." He turns to stare at the kroot in hopeless honesty. The pipe's smoke continued to billow aimlessly from the pit. Reikoff softly gripped the basin with gloved fingers, eyes focusing on nothing in particular.
"We've sailed together for over twenty years. Never have we seen–"
"Anything like this, no." The kroot chirped with a defeated nod, wiping his beak with the back of his hand. The two stood in silence as the bridge ever so slowly stitched itself back together. The uninjured worked overtime to square-away or repair damaged equipment; those who were injured insisted on aiding unless they were physically unable to move. The dead had been courteously moved to one side to be better taken care of, later. Reikoff continued to ruminate and ponder the circumstances to them being here, until a young female voice caught his attention by directly addressing him. Reikoff's bionic eye whirs to focus on a ginger-haired voidswoman staring at him from one of the terminals down below, hands laced behind her back.
"Yes?" Reikoff blankly drones. The woman actively sought his attention, so he figured it was bound to be something important. The woman gives a soft salute.
"My lord. Acting lead-signalwoman Adeline Yaria. Lead-signalman Carter's dead." Reikoff nodded ever so gently in understanding. Carter was a decent signalman and was a professional at handling diagnostics and reports through the bridge. If Yaria was next in line it was because Carter picked her to be so. She was skilled. And that was why he wasn't going to like what she was going to tell him.
"Report Yaria. Casualties; damage both internal and external; operational functionality. Everything. Spare no details." Yaria nods, nervous and on-edge. Clearing her throat, she begins.
"Casualties have peaked at nine thousand six-hundred and thirty-one; seven thousand nine-hundred and fifty-four of those are confirmed dead. Engines three, five and six are heavily-damaged, but the leak has been contained. Power capacity is currently at thirteen percent. Enough to send out the emergency SOS and maintain short-range comms but…we're trapped here. And the astropaths are unable to read for the Scar." Reikoff's hands balled into fists around the rail; his cracked teeth clenching around the pipe to the point where one of his incisors was getting ready to snap in half. The situation was far worse than he could've imagined; half the crew dead, the rest scattered and left to fix a broken ship amidst an empty void with a sentient warpstorm potentially minutes away from manifesting upon their position and tearing them apart.
His head bows with an exasperated exhale of defeat.
"Throne…what kind've anomaly could've cause–"
"...sir. That's…not all." Yaria interjected. Her voice filled with rueful apprehension. The silent gaze up from the rogue trader incentive to elaborate. "We've got a report of the cause of the…everything. It was a contained internal blast- energy traces sampled by our techpriests confirm the blast was caused by a pulsar mine." Yarai dared not look up at the helm. She wanted to avoid the abject bewilderment and stark anger in her commander's eye.
"...a pulsar mine?!" His baleful roar caused the entire bridge to halt. Whilst the ship's alarm continued to blare in the background, and faulty electronics continued to spark their death throes, this was pure silence in comparison. Reikoff glared down at Yaria, who was shrinking under his gaze.
"Well?! Where the fuck did -THAT- come from, voidsman?!"
"The vault." She muttered.
"Where?!"
"The vault." She repeated, a lot clearer. Reikoff's anger only flared. It was a wonder the pipe was still in his mouth.
"The fucking vault?! How?! It was sealed ever since we reclaimed the cargo from the 'Duty Bound'! All that was in there was the xenos artef–" The revelation hit him almost as hard as the shockwave did. It all began to make sense…the shock of the blast, the internal damage, the lack of any sign of attack or even a warp-related anomaly.
Even moreso, the origins of the alien weapon and how it so effortlessly crippled the ship began to make more and more sense as the dots connected. And just like that, the anger began to drain from the rogue trader. Realisation dawned on him, and he began to feel a sickness rising in his gut. Slamming his palms on the guard rail, he drags hard on the pipe, hoping the surge of spiced nicotine would calm his nerves.
It did not. He was facing the facts. The situation had gone from bad to astronomically-worse.
"The artefacts." He began with a slow drawl. Daan'ii tilted his head to regard the rogue trader. "They came in ornate containers. Shielded behind some xenos encryption that prevented scanners and warded-off harm. One of those was the mine." The pieces began to fall into place for the remaining crew.
"The encryption was deactivated when we entered dead space." Yaria chimed-in.
"The mine was detonated. Whether on a timer, or remotely, it matters not: orchestrated, this was. We were meant to find it." The kroot growled. Reikoff's glower is set in ferrocrete. And his next words are laced with venom.
"This was a trap." And he was fairly certain he knew who had set it. And just as if his words were cosmically-timed:
"The Scar! The Scar!" A young crewmate's voice cried out in alarm- his finger pointing frenziedly into the void of space.
Panic suddenly gripped the bridge in its entirety as all eyes were drawn to the haunting anomaly unfolding outside the bridge's view. Some stood, rooted to the spot, frozen in fear. Some entered desperate prayer for the God-Emperor to deliver them from the unholy evil that was forming before them.
"O'Lord Emperor, hallowed be thy na–"
"Oh, fucking he–"
"We're dead! We're so fraggin' de–"
"We need to abandon ship! The Spear's los–"
A cacophony of hopelessness echoed around the bridge- the collective despair feeding off itself and amplifying in multitude as the end was drawing near. Yet despite all this, Lord Reikoff continued to stare out of the windows into the spawning rift thousands of miles away. His hopelessness began to burn away, replaced by a glowering fire in his heart; it was anger and hatred, growing from a simmer in his blood to a boiling point.
The Spear had been attacked; HE had been attacked; House Reikoff had spilled blood courtesy of a coward's mine, and the indignation royally pissed him off. The voices of despair and terror around him grew to a blur as the rift in front of them coalesced- but it was no warp storm.
"It's not the Scar." Reikoff called out- voice even and full of bale, but loud enough for the crew to hear him. His voice rolled across the bridge like a lash that cracked to keep the subordinates and doomsayers in line. Screams and unified cries began to die down to barely hushed whispers or abject silence as they bore witness.
The black curtain of space tore open- a great ovular rift of thousand mile-wide midnight-blue spirals and coronas orbiting a starless void of black. It would be maddening to stare into if not for the strange, paracausal beauty it provided. There was no insanity that scratched at the minds of those who stared into it. It was no divination of the Warp. It was a gateway to something just as ancient, and just as mysterious. The proverbial backdoors of the Warp.
A gateway that something was stepping through.
"SIR!" A voidsman cried out- as if Reikoff couldn't see the distinct form of a ship's prow bleeding in through the darkness- sailing from the endless black void like it was materialising into existence to be illuminated by the endless universe of stars around it.
Reikoff's jaw clenched around the pipe; his glower deepening into a malicious glare as the ship continued to crawl further into view. The shape of the ship was entirely alien in design. It was sleek, elegant and sharp. The prow rounded to an oval point that carried its profile down the very rear. The engines were blaring cerulean-white energy into the void as it propelled itself further into physical space- accented by the alluring 'fins' that adorned the aft of the ship that allowed the vessel to visually mimic some form of marine creature; a vertical and two diagonal stabilising rudders that pulsed with a translucent vermillion light which served to highlight the jet-black hull and crimson-red highlights on the illustrious panelling.
Nested proudly on the nose of the xenos vessel was the heraldry of a limbless dragon coiling in an 'S'- mane flared, jaws wide and tongue lashing out in a proud display of threat. The visible batteries of weaponry festooning the ship only added to the vessel's grandiose menace.
The lightless void within the blue-hued maelstrom began to break, as another two vessels of a slightly smaller stature, but undeniably identical aesthetic crept forth either side of the larger vessel.
As panicked murmurs began to rise in the bridge, once more, Daan'ii stood beside his lord who brooded on the circumstances unfolding before them, his suspicions confirmed.
He'd faced pirates throughout his starfaring, many times. And every time the Spear would render them to splintered wrecks in the empty space, be they human bandit dregs, desperate renegades or rampaging ork freebooterz. But this was one foe he was all too in-the-know of about their exploits against their chosen targets.
It was this knowhow that always had him make sure he never dared draw the attention of this capricious foe. But as he stared down those emerging ships, he knew that despite all his efforts, he'd failed to account for who just may have been prowling the Halo Stars in the dark- hidden behind the intrinsic veil of the Webway…
"Eldar." He gruffly breathes. For he knew these would be the final hours of Lord Alexzai Reikoff III and the Spear of Avarice.
+++++ Welcome_to_the_Imperial_Archives +++++
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+++++ Archive_Access: GRANTED +++++
+++++ Datasheet_10683: The_Halo_Stars +++++
+++++ Details: 'The Halo Stars are situated in the furthest reaches of the Segmentum Obscurus; an ancient formation of stars scattered around the fringes of the Milky Way galaxy. They are usually regarded as the last stellar body one will encounter and pass through before they find themselves in the deepest, most cold, barren reaches of the intergalactic void. Such is their ancient age that they are barely understood, mostly undiscovered, and are instead synonymous with superstition, mystery and unbridled danger. Whatever kind of worlds- if any- orbit the 200,000 lightyear-spanning clusters of the Halo are not chartered on any imperial records.
The Halo Stars intrigue goes hand-in-hand with its reputation of a malignant nature, given the myriad of threats that circle within their lights. The more blissfully-ignorant are confident that the Stars themselves are haunted; rogue traders and explorers from the Adeptus Mechanicus seem to unintentionally support these superstitions, as errant explorers and maiden voyages who attempt to pierce the veil and charter its horizons are never seen again- as if claimed by the stars, themselves.
Though these superstitions hold little credibility. The likely deaths of these doomed expeditions are mostly attributed to the warp-spawned entities, unmarked xenos species, renegade warbands and pirates who lurk amongst the safety this repellent space provides. Frequent patrols from the Adeptus Astartes are left to keep these threats in-check.
Perhaps the greatest known threat is an anomaly known as the 'Halo Scar'. A thousands-mile-wide warp storm that gestated within the deepest bowels of the Halo Stars, it is not known where or how the storm originated or how its somewhat sentient behaviour exists and what vile heresy spawned it. All that is known that the presence of the Scar makes warp travel through the Halo Stars nigh suicidal. Its mere existence disrupts the connection to the Astronomicon whilst its constant fluctuations and movements require consistent tracking from a ship's astropaths, lest they find the Scar materialising upon them- devouring the vessel as if it was a mere crumb on the table.
As of recent developments, the Koronus Expanse has been established on the outskirts of the Halo Stars within the Calixis sector. To this day, the Imperium's brave expeditioners push further and further into the Expanse with the assistance of rogue trader coteries- guided by the charts and plans of previous failed expeditions. It is an endeavour that will take centuries, perhaps millenia. But one day, the Halo Stars will belong to the Imperium.
After all, the stars are ours to claim, so said the great Lord Solar Macharius.'
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+++++ Carry_the_Will_of_the_Emperor_like_a_torch_in_the_darkness +++++
Bit of a 'sike!' move despite my promises to introduce you all to the other main protagonist of the story. This part was mainly just to set the scene for what lies next, and will also provide a bit of a throwback in later chapters.~
As you can see, I barely understand sh*t regarding anything related to maritime protocols, or imperial battleship layouts/crews, but I gave it my best for the sake of good storytelling and flavour!
Review Responses
Rigel132
No guardsman would know anything about the eldar other than what they read in their field guides. But Arlen -does- know a few things, which will be covered as we dive deeper into his history as we progress!
The amendment to the eldar's timespan has been made; much appreciated for the correction!
Un Bot Ruso (loosely translated via Google)
You are no bother whatsoever, and I certainly enjoy discussing your theories seeing as only I know where the plot's going. It makes it all the more sweeter for me when you either hit the nail on the head with your predictions, or the rug's just yoinked out underneath you in a delicious twist!
The exodites are certainly somewhat integral to the world-building for this story, but they won't be the main focus! What drives the two protagonists together, however, might run a lil bit deeper than simply trying to dodge some drukhari…~
I won't comment on whether your heresy on eldarxhuman is healthy for the soul or not; can already hear the commissar fumbling for his bolt pistol in the background…
Lord Marshal
I think the story for Bearer & The Blade has progressed beyond escaping the orks, now. And whilst I get the slow pace may be off-putting for some, when you have a relationship as complicated as an aeldari and a human as the focus, you gotta take your time to develop these things; both characters come from such strict, antagonistic regimes cemented by millenia of racial prejudice and bloodshed. And that's before you factor in an eldar's haughty attitude and snobby down-talking to humans, possible language barriers etc.
To simply make the romance happen over half a dozen chapters would just…feel a bit rushed, without much time for chemistry to develop and feel real.
I'm gonna try and replicate that impression.